Thinking with Sketches

Sketches serve to externalize ideas, render fleeting ideas permanent, confer coherence on scattered concepts, and turn internal thoughts public. They can be created and recreated, examined and re-examined, configured and reconfigured, considered and reconsidered, for clarity and for creativity. The schematic vocabulary of sketches allows both expression and discovery of ideas. Sketching is integral to design, where vagueness encourages reinterpretation and discourages fixation. Using sketches to those ends requires constructive perception, a combination of a perceptual skill of reconfiguring and a cognitive skill of finding remote associations.